Research Overview

Dr. Grant is the Director of the Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center (FNNDSC) at Children's Hospital Boston. The center's purpose is to create the infrastructure and provide the expertise needed to support and foster cutting edge clinical and translational science research involving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) across multiple subspecialties.
The center's work addresses critical needs in the pediatric population:
Children are different than adults: Children's brains go through dramatic changes in size and composition, with associated physiological changes. Children need technology developed for the unique size and physiology of their brains.
Children's brains are not fully "online": It is impossible, for example, to test an infant's language function, so it is important to develop imaging approaches that permit clinicians to evaluate the structures and the physiological health of regions that will promote developing functions. This will allow clinicians to better predict function in individual children.
Children's brains are much more plastic than adult brains: To optimize the potential of each individual child, safe methods are needed to monitor brain growth and development as well as response to therapy. The multiple modalities employed by the center are safe and provide the most sophisticated means of monitoring brain heath.
The development of a child's brain is an extremely complex process: A multidisciplinary center, where clinicians and scientists can come together and work with a common set of tools, is necessary to improve knowledge of brain development.

About P. Ellen Grant, MD

Dr. Grant holds a Master of Science degree in physics and an MD from the University of Toronto. She did her radiology residency at Vancouver General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada, and her fellowship in adult and pediatric neuroradiology at the University of California, San Francisco. She is now an associate professor of radiology at the Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Grant headed the Division of Pediatric Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital for five years before moving to Children's Hospital Boston to become the founding director of the Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center and the first incumbent of Children's Hospital Boston Chair in Neonatology. At Children's she holds appointments in the Division of Newborn Medicine and the Department of Radiology.
Dr. Grant is a co-author of two popular textbooks for clinical neuroradiology and has won a number of awards for her research efforts as well as recognition for her clinical excellence.